Mambo! 👋 Nala borrowed $50 million this week to prefund its payment operations. Stablecoins made settlement faster. They did not remove the need for liquidity.
The story
Nala borrowed $50 million to keep its stablecoin payments moving.
The money is not for building new products. It is for prefunding, making sure there is always enough liquidity to process payments across its 16 markets before customers pay.
We said it last week. Even with stablecoins, you will still need to prefund.
Deals
Three stablecoin infrastructure companies raised $62.4 Million within one week.
Sorted Wallet raised $4.4 million to bring stablecoin wallets to feature phones. Checker raised $8 million to help banks and fintechs connect to stablecoin rails through one API, after processing $3 billion in its first year.
Nala also secured $50 million in debt financing for one of the oldest problems in payments: prefunding.
The infrastructure layer is being funded seriously.
Launches
Busha launched crypto-backed cards that allow users across Africa to spend directly from their stablecoin and digital asset balances without first converting funds manually into fiat.
In April we wrote that cards did not fail in Africa because people did not want to pay digitally. They failed because local currencies were unstable, FX conversion was expensive, and dollar access required a banking relationship most people do not have.
Stablecoin cards fix that with stable money and dollar access that does not depend on who you know at a bank.
Regulation
South Africa’s Reserve Bank and Financial Sector Conduct Authority made their position clear this week: crypto is not money in South Africa.
Bitcoin and stablecoins are not legal tender. They are not recognized as payment instruments, and domestic crypto payments sit outside the National Payment System Act.
But one important part was left open: cross-border payments.
And that is where stablecoins are finding their strongest use case.
Not replacing domestic money, but becoming infrastructure for moving money across borders.
Madini
Ghana’s Central Bank Fintech Director, Kwame Oppong, had one message for African central banks:
“Focus on the immediate, which is stablecoins, but do not dial back the pressure on CBDCs. That effort needs to continue. And you need to have your own form of tokenized digital money. Currency is only issued by one institution, the state, and we have to make sure there is a digital form of it.”
A senior African regulator just said stablecoins are the immediate priority. That does not happen often.
From inside
Swahilies secured a Payment Service Provider (PSP) license in Tanzania.
The company is registered in Delaware and primarily operates in Tanzania, a market where stablecoin regulation is still developing.
Swahilies said it is following stablecoin developments globally and exploring opportunities in markets with clearer frameworks. In Tanzania, the company is focused on engaging with the ecosystem and learning from regulated initiatives such as NedaPay, which received Bank of Tanzania sandbox approval to test stablecoin solutions.
A PSP license is not a stablecoin license. But it is the foundation everything else gets built on.
On the record
Africa Stablecoin Stack.
Written from inside Africa with love 🇹🇿💚
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